Mr. Brainwash
Origins: Mr. Brainwash, or MBW for short, is the name used by Thierry Guetta, the French born street artist and film maker. As seen through the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, ''Guetta first gets into the street art world when on a visit to France he discovers that his cousin is Invader, a well known street artist in France. Guetta is fascinated by his cousin's art and asks to go with him next time so he can film him in action. Guetta continues to follow Invader around in France, documenting him as he puts up art all around France. Later, when Invader visits Guetta in his home in Los Angeles, he sets Guetta up to document the famous Shepard Fairey while Fairey sets up his iconic street art all round Los Angeles. This is when Guetta tells Fairey that he is going to make a documentary about street art. He had no real intention of doing so but saying that he was making a documentary convinced Fairey to let Guetta film him and his fellow street artist as they did their work all around the United States. Eventually Fairey introduces Guetta to Banksy, the famous and anonymous British street artist. Banksy agreed to let Guetta film him because he recognized that street art has a short life span. Guetta continues to film Banksy up until after Banksy's famous art showing, "Barley Legal". This is when Guetta produces his documentary called "Life Remote Control". Bansky is disappointed by the documentary and suggests to Guetta that he puts on his own art show. The Start of Mr. Brainwash: As seen in the documentary ''Exit Through the Gift Shop, Guetta really takes Banksy's suggestion to heart. He names himself Mr. Brainwash and re- mortgages his business in order to buy equipment and hire staff to make art under his supervision. He plans to run a show called "Life is Beautiful". In order to build hype, he gets both Banksy and Fairey to endorse his show. This immediately builds hype for the show. Since Guetta hired people to make all the art, he focused a lot on advertising, even getting on the cover of L.A weekly. The hype for his show builds up massively, and when it is finally released it is a huge hit, selling almost one million dollars worth of art. Work after "Life is Beautiful": Since his first successful show, Mr. Brainwash has had multiple commissions and shows. Multiple musicians, including Madonna, asked him to design their album covers. One of his bigger shows was called Art Show 2011 and took place in an 80,000 square foot building. It had multiple galleries and live musical concerts going on. Mr. Brainwash has also made murals in both 2014 and 2015 to commemorate the September 11th terrorist attacks. Theories: There are many theories about Mr. Brainwash since the release of the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop by Banksy in 2010. Mainly these theories involve Mr. Brainwash being a hoax created by Banksy. These theories revolve around how Mr. Brainwash is never seen working on art and is portrayed as a comical person in the documentary. The theories also insist that Mr. Brainwash is just a front for Banksy and that Mr. Brainwash is a prank from Banksy to show how hype and name recognition can affect people. Examples of Art: created by Christopher Wator